Conservation, public lands, and outdoor recreation

My research analyzes the economics of public lands and rural communities, the outdoor recreation economy, and approaches to conservation funding. 

public lands and rural communities

National monuments are protected federal lands that are home to scientific, cultural and historic resources. They have been fraught with conflict and controversy over the years. Using longitudinal data on all individual business establishments in the 8-state Mountain West region from 1990 through 2015, my coauthors and I conducted a difference-in-differences regression analysis of the impacts of national monument designations on local economic growth. Key findings: monuments appear to help, not hurt, local economies. Article published in Science Advances, March 18, 2020. Also a Resources magazine article (written by my colleagues and with some cool graphics) and an easy-listening (I promise!) podcast. This study has received some press attention—the best stories are in The Salt Lake Tribune and Popular Science.

In early version of the federal budget bill in 2025, Congress proposed selling public lands, ostensibly to help solve the housing affordability crisis. With a colleague, I evaluated this argument, finding that most cities and towns in the American West that are facing housing affordability challenges have plenty of developable private land nearby much more so than public land. Moreover, public land tends to have a number of issues associated with use for housing.

National parks

In a January 2019 Resources Radio podcast, I talk about some of the problems the U.S. national park system is facing, including funding shortfalls and overcrowding. I discuss some of the proposals for how to solve these problems, including dedicated funds from oil and gas leases on public lands, increased entrance fees to the parks, and more. In this peer-reviewed journal article, a colleague and I assess the pros and cons of a federal excise tax on outdoor recreation gear to pay for the parks. Our conclusion: a 5% tax on all gear (note: hunting and fishing equipment is already subject to a 10% tax) would generate about $4.6 billion per year and would generate a relatively small excess tax burden per dollar of revenue raised. As the national park system continues to be underfunded, I increasingly feel that we need to find a funding solution, like the gear tax, that moves beyond the annual appropriations process. I published a review of the economics literature on national parks, with a focus on values, funding, and resource management challenges, in October 2022.

In a May 2019 blog post, Reyna Askew and I write about the lack of diversity among visitors to national parks and other public lands. We talk about the financial, historical, and cultural reasons why people of color may not be recreating on public lands. We offer two policy proposals but also caution that diversity initiatives need to be developed in tandem with the communities they are designed to serve.

parks and conservation funding

The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) provides funding for federal, state, and local parks using revenues from offshore oil and gas leases. I’ve written many times about LWCF, which has accomplished a lot for parks and conservation over its 55-year history. This RFF Explainer provides good background and current context for the program, which got a good boost in 2020 from passage of the Great America Outdoors Act. This interview I did of Senator Maria Cantwell talks about the new law.

General appropriations funding for state and local parks has declined over the years. In its place has been an increase in user fees, philanthropy (especially in cities), and a variety of different kinds of dedicated taxes and fees. I am skeptical of philanthropy; it works in big cities with a lot of wealthy residents (think New York City) but has several drawbacks. I wrote about the pros and cons in this RFF Issue Brief.

This RFF report evaluates alternative funding options for state parks, spotlighting a few states that have developed robust options (I’m looking at you, Michigan). In this article in Parks and Recreation magazine, and building off the RFF report, I describe alternative dedicated funding approaches for state parks.

values, benefits, and ecosystem services

In an article in Land Economics (coauthored with Jessica Chu and Carolyn Kousky), “Is What You See What You Get? The Value of Natural Landscape Views,” I use hedonic property value techniques to estimate the value of nature views (ungated version of paper available here). In an earlier paper in American Journal of Agricultural Economics, “The Tradeoff between Private Lots and Public Open Space in Subdivisions at the Urban-Rural Fringe,” Elizabeth Kopits, Virginia McConnell and I assessed how homebuyers value subdivision open space vis-a-vis their own private lot space (ungated version available here). With coauthors, I estimated costs and benefits of floodplain conservation in two settings; those papers are described on the “Hurricanes, flooding, and climate resilience” research page.

In a Water Economics and Policy article with Yusuke Kuwayama, “Evaluating Payments for Watershed Services Programs in the United States,” we describe 15 programs in the U.S. that use a payment for ecosystem services type program to protect forests and other natural lands to provide clean drinking water and surface water, flood attenuation, and other water-related services. One message from our paper: these programs need better data, monitoring, reporting, and measurement to evaluate whether they are working as they should.